


From Where You Are

by samslostshoe



Series: Mingled Souls [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: California, Derek Hale is Bad at Feelings, M/M, POV Stiles, Pining, Post-Season/Series 03 Finale, Postcards, Road Trips, Season/Series 03, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-25 00:03:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/946286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samslostshoe/pseuds/samslostshoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three weeks after Derek and Cora skip town, Stiles begins receiving postcards from all around California, signed "D." </p><p>+++</p><p> <em>Who would take the time to send him a postcard and then not give any indication of who he is except for one initial? Who would possibly go to all that trouble just to be uncommunicative and mysterious?</em><br/><em>Of course, Stiles knows exactly who sent it.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	From Where You Are

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Postcards](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/26658) by Shiann. 



> Title inspired by this quote:  
> “Send me things in the mail. Wherever you go, I don’t care where you go, just send me something in the mail from where you are.” —Wallace Berman  
> Thanks to my beta Maizie, a newbie to Teen Wolf.  
> This is my first straight-up, canon verse Sterek fic, so enjoy!

Stiles receives the first postcard three weeks after Derek and Cora leave town. It’s warm, and Stiles is sweating in his red hoodie. He’s taken to wearing it pretty often lately, if only for the sheer irony. A spastic teenage boy who’s friends with wolves, a lost little girl who is attacked by one, he gets it, it’s funny.

But it’s not so funny to be trudging home from school under the hot, nearly-summer sun, sweating like a bastard in the very same red hoodie. He gets why it’s called a sweatshirt, _message received, thank you, you can stop it now_. But of course the sun pays him no heed.

His poor Jeep is still a little banged up from hitting that tree on the night of the lunar eclipse, and he hasn’t been able to save up enough to put her in the shop yet. Thus, he’s forced to walk _everywhere_. And Stiles has discovered definitively that he is the most out-of-shape person he knows. Although, most of his friends are werewolves, lacrosse players, or badass hunters. Even Lydia does pilates. Stiles’ habit of spending all his spare time in front of the computer has not exactly made for super-toned biceps.

He wishes Scott had a car.

He arrives on his doorstep panting, even though the school is only about a mile and a half away. Dragging his feet up the few steps to the door, he raises a limp arm to grab the mail. He enters the house tiredly, kicking the door closed as he rifles through the mail.

_Bill._

_Bill._

_Junk._

_Bank statement._

_Postcard._

_Campaign ad._

_Ju—_

Stiles stops his mental inventory, quickly rummaging back in the pile for the postcard. It’s got sand dunes all over it, with an inscription in the bottom corner that reads, “Death Valley,” with the subscript, “National Park.” Scrawled across the front of the card are the words, “It’s hot.” It’s signed, “-D.”

Stiles flips the card over; it’s addressed to him, but nothing else is written on it. The side meant for writing a message on has been neglected. _Weird_. Who would take the time to send him a postcard and then not give any indication of who he is except for one initial? Who would possibly go to all that trouble just to be uncommunicative and mysterious?

Of course, Stiles knows exactly who sent it.

 

 

“You really think Derek sent them?” Scott asks doubtfully, examining the two postcards on the fridge. The second one, from Calico Ghost Town, had arrived two days after the first.

“You think he didn’t?” Stiles counters, grabbing a couple of glasses out of the cabinet.

“Well,” Scott says, tracing the words with his fingers, “he’s not really the type to send postcards, is he?”

“You know what’s weird?” Stiles asks, bumping Scott out of the way to grab to OJ out of the fridge. “We’ve known Derek for, what, like two years now?” He pours them both glasses as he speaks. “And neither of us has any idea what his handwriting looks like.”

Scott snatches the Ghost Town card off the fridge and holds it up to his nose, eyes flashing red.

“What do you smell, wolf-boy?” Stiles asks, draining his glass in one go and reaching for the popcorn in front of him.

“Mmm,” Scott hums, closing his eyes and taking a big sniff, “Canvas. Paper. Sharpie. Sweat. And…” he trails off, looking contemplative.

“What is it?” Stiles asks eagerly, leaning forward, his mouth full of popcorn. “Is it Derek?”

“Yeah, maybe. I think so,” Scott says, carefully sticking it back on the fridge with its pear-shaped magnet.

“And, I mean,” Stiles says, reaching for the other glass, “What other ‘D’ do we know who’d be trekking around in Death Valley?” He raises the glass to his lips.

Without turning around, Scott says, voice deathly quiet, “If you drink my juice, so help me god, I will tear your throat out.”

Stiles jerks his head back in surprise, slamming the glass back down. “You okay, dude?” he asks, quirking an eyebrow in Scott’s direction.

Scott turns around with a shit-eating grin plastered all over his face. “Sorry,” he says, voice bubbling with suppressed laughter, “With Derek gone, I thought you might be missing the death threats.”

Stiles throws popcorn at him.

 

 

 

The next postcard comes a week after the first. Stiles has been eagerly checking the mailbox every day, and his heart has sunk a little lower with every pile of junk and bills that his diligence has produced.

But today, it’s different, and when he find the Los Angeles postcard tucking into the rest of the mail, he gets a giddy feeling in his chest. He carries it around all day, rubbing his thumb against the words, smelling the sharpie, running his fingers over the sharp corners until they’re worn-down and pliant. He reads the message over and over, chuckling as he imagines Derek snapping grumpily at the massive LA crowds.

He’s so distracted that he nearly runs Allison down in the hallway.

“Whoa!” she exclaims, holding out her hands to stop him from barrelling into her. “Eyes on the road, Stiles.”

He laughs, stepping back and trying to slip the postcard into his back pocket, but Allison’s hand shoots out and clasps his wrist firmly. “Ah, ah, ah,” she chastens, plucking the card out of his hand. “Who’s D?”

Stiles shrugs. “Not sure.”

“Liar.”

“Fine,” he relents, throwing up his hands. “Derek. Probably.” He grabs at the card, rending it from her clasped hands.

Allison’s eyebrows practically shoot into her hair. “ _Derek_ is sending you _postcards_?” she asks, and Stiles thinks that he’s never heard anyone sound more incredulous.

“Maybe?” he says, making a bemused face.

Allison doesn’t say anything, just twists her mouth thoughtfully and squeezes his shoulder as she passes by. Stiles can’t shake the feeling the look in her eye gives him, as if they have a shared secret that Stiles himself isn’t privy to.

 

 

 

Stiles smiles brilliantly as he attaches the fourth postcard to the fridge. There are a lot of things to smile about: first and foremost, the thought of Derek at the beach. If he hated Los Angeles, he would have completely loathed Mission Beach. Then there’s the fact that Derek can surf. Stiles wonders how he’d learned. He hopes he gets the chance to ask. He hopes Derek will come home, eventually.

And then there’s the message, scrawled, as usual, in black sharpie across the front of the card. “I should teach you to surf.” Stiles has dissected it to death. Does it mean that when Derek comes back to Beacon Hills, he’ll teach Stiles? Did Derek mean “should have taught”? And why would he ever do such a thing? Stiles know that their relationship has improved since they met, but they aren’t friends, not really. Not like him and Scott or him and Lydia, or even him and Allison. It’s something to think about.

“Another one?” Stiles’ dad asks from behind him.

“Yep,” is all Stiles answers him with.

“They’re from that Hale kid, aren’t they?” his dad asks, sipping his coffee.

Stiles whirls around, maybe a little too fast, because his feet get tangled together and he nearly trips. He throws out a hand to catch himself, grabbing the edge of the counter. Then he leans on it, nonchalant, trying to pass off this display as something intentional. Stiles’ dad just looks at him, amused.

“What makes you say that?” Stiles asks, casually.

“I asked Scott,” his dad says matter-of-factly.

“That traitor,” Stiles mutters. Scott will pay.

“Now, correct me if I’m wrong,” his dad says, tapping his fingers on the side of the coffee mug he’s holding, “but you and Derek aren’t exactly friends.”

“Correction!” Stiles says, “We are, in fact, the best of friends. We have slumber parties and paint each others’ nails and talk about boys and—”

“Alright, alright,” Stiles’ dad interrupts, waving his hand, “none of my business, I get it.”

“You know what I love about you, Dad?” Stiles asks, smiling sweetly.

“Do I want to?” his dad asks dubiously.

“You totally respect my privacy,” Stiles says, and walks out of the kitchen.

 

 

Stiles makes the mistake of taking the postcard out of his pocket when he’s having coffee with Lydia. She roped him into it, saying he owed her for that one time she stopped his panic attack. He told her he was only doing it because Scott was with Allison. But she knew that wasn’t true.

Lydia has the postcard in her hand so quickly that Stiles hardly notices it leaving his hand. “D, hmm?” she asks, pursing her lips. “And how _is_ our alpha?”

“I...he...how do...what?” Stiles sputters, shocked by how quickly she understood.

Lydia rolls her eyes at him. “Honestly, Stiles, you are such a dumbass sometimes.”

“Hey,” Stiles protests, reaching out for the card, “I resent that.”

“Tough,” she says, taking a sip of her skinny chai latte with extra whipped cream.

He gazes silently at the card for a moment, before saying, “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, just in this instance, I am a dumbass. Why am I a dumbass?”

Lydia gives him a look, but not one of her usual, patented ‘alpha bitch’ looks. It’s honest, and caring, and a little bit sad. “If you don’t already know I’m not going to tell you,” she says. “It’s something you’ll need to figure out on your own.”

Wow, Stiles thinks, that was almost compassionate.

And then Lydia goes and ruins it by punctuating her sentence with, “Idiot.”

 

It has been almost a month since the last postcard. For a while, Stiles checked every day. And while he came up with nothing day after day after day, his hope didn’t diminish. He waited outside on the doorstep for the mailman, telling his dad he didn’t have anything better to do. And he didn’t, not really, because what was important was hearing from Derek. Knowing he was okay. Knowing he was thinking of Stiles. Stiles craves is, this communication, needs it without knowing fully why. Of course, he has an idea. He just tries not to think about it, to escape the crushing reality of the unlikelihood of reciprocity.

As the weeks pass, though, Stiles begins to give up. He stops checking the mail when it arrives, instead sifting through the pile when his dad left it on the kitchen table instead. And after a bit, he stopped doing even that. He didn’t touch the mail at all.

And then, his dad knocks on his door, after he had given up, after he was over it (okay, not over it, but getting there), after he had erased his anger and his despondency and felt mildly okay most of the time. And his dad hands him the postcard.

Stiles stares at it. And suddenly, he just feels so angry. It’s not enough that Derek hasn’t contacted him in a month, but when he finally does, Derek has written two words. _Two goddamn words._ Nothing personal, nothing apologetic, no explanation for having dropped entirely off the grid.

Stiles sprints down the stairs to the kitchen, right up to the fridge, and he tears off every single one of Derek’s stupid postcards. He storms over to the sink, opening the cabinet below and shoving them into the recycling (because he can’t help but care about the planet, even when he’s in a howling fury).

He never wants to have to think about stupid fucking Derek Hale again.

 

Stiles finds the postcard staring him in the face when he drags himself out of bed on Saturday. It’s been carefully stuck to the refrigerator door with a magnet shaped like an apple, and Stiles knows that it was his dad.

He re-reads the message, breath catching in his throat as the full significance of the words sinks in. Derek misses him. Derek, wherever the hell he is, misses him, misses Stiles. And Stiles hates to be that guy, but the moment he realizes this, all of his anger melts away.

He pulls the card down from the fridge, flipping it over just to check, but as usual the opposite side is blank save for his address and name. He turns it back to the front, examining it closely, because he can’t stop the feeling that something is different. Of course, the obvious difference is that this postcard isn’t from a specific location, it’s just a generic California one.

Stiles can’t help it; his brain goes on, full steam ahead, without him. Why would Derek suddenly send a different kind of postcard? If he had moved to a new location, wouldn’t he have sent a postcard from that location? It makes no sense. Unless…

_Oh._

“Dad,” he hollers, “I’m going out!” He doesn’t wait for his dad to acknowledge him, doesn’t stop to change out of his pajamas, doesn’t mind the fact that he hasn’t eaten breakfast, just rips the postcard off the fridge, grabs the keys and his red hoodie and goes, running towards his dad’s cruiser. He’ll probably get in trouble later, but he doesn’t care.

It takes him fifteen minutes to get to the loft, and he spends the next two staring at the heavy door, just hoping. He hasn’t felt that sort of hope about Derek Hale in a while.

Stiles takes a deep breath: _in, out._ He can do this. If he’s wrong, then he’s wrong. It won’t be the end of the world. He tugs the door open, slowly, and it squeaks on its hinges.

Derek looks up from his suitcase, which he has open and partially unpacked on his bed. He’s shaved his beard, and his hair is a little longer, and he’s wearing looser, lighter jeans, but he’s still Derek.

Stiles doesn’t say anything, just walks right up to him and grabs him by the front of his shirt and kisses the surprised look off his stupid face. Derek shoves him off, hands braced against his shoulders, and their eyes meet. And for a second, Stiles feels...fuck, he has no idea what he feels, but it feels good. Right.

And Stiles doesn’t care that he’s wearing his pajamas, doesn’t care that he hasn’t brushed his teeth or eaten, doesn’t care that Cora is standing in the room, making retching noises, doesn’t care that he’s probably in deep shit with his dad for taking the cruiser. All that matters is that he is here and that Derek is here. That Derek is home.

“I missed you too,” Stiles says, holding up the postcard, Derek’s hands still firm on his shoulders. Derek smiles, genuine and warm, and pulls Stiles in for another kiss.


End file.
